John Muir Writings

My First Summer in the Sierra

by John Muir (1911)

Chapter 9
Bloody Cañon and Mono Lake

August 21.
—Have just returned from a fine wild excursion across the range to
Mono Lake, by way of the Mono or Bloody Cañon Pass. Mr. Delaney has
been good to me all summer, lending a helping, sympathizing hand at
every opportunity, as if my wild
notions and rambles and studies were his own. He is one of those
remarkable California men who have been overflowed and denuded and
remodeled by the excitements of the gold fields, like the Sierra
landscapes by grinding ice, bringing the harder bosses and ridges of
character into relief, —a tall, lean, big-boned, big-hearted
Irishman, educated for a priest in Maynooth College, —lots of good in
him, shining out now and then in this mountain light. Recognizing my
love of wild places, he told me one evening that I ought to go through
Bloody Cañon, for he was sure I should find it wild enough. He had not
been there himself, he said, but had heard many of his mining friends
speak of it as the wildest of all the Sierra passes. Of course I was
glad to go. It lies just to the east of our camp and swoops down from
the summit of the range to the edge of the Mono desert, making a
descent of about four thousand feet in a distance of about four miles.
It was known and traveled
as a pass by wild animals and the Indians long before its discovery by
white men in the gold year of 1858, as is shown by old trails which
come together at the head of it. The name may have been suggested by
the red color of the metamorphic slates in which the cañon abounds, or
by the blood stains on the rocks from the unfortunate animals that
were compelled to slide and shuffle over the sharp-angled boulders.

Early in the morning I tied my note-book and some bread to my belt,
and strode away full of eager hope, feeling that I was going to have a
glorious revel. The glacier meadows that lay along my way served to
soothe my morning speed, for the sod was full of blue gentians and
daisies, kalmia and dwarf vaccinium, calling for recognition as old
friends, and I had to stop many times to examine the shining rocks
over which the ancient glacier had passed with tremendous pressure,
polishing them so well that they reflected the sunlight like glass in
some places,
while fine stri, seen clearly through a lens, indicated the direction
in which the ice had flowed. On some of the sloping polished pavements
abrupt steps occur, showing that occasionally large masses of the rock
had given way before the glacial pressure, as well as small particles;
moraines, too, some scattered, others regular like long curving
embankments and dams, occur here and there, giving the general surface
of the region a young, new-made appearance. I watched the gradual
dwarfing of the pines as I ascended, and the corresponding dwarfing of
nearly all the rest of the vegetation. On the slopes of Mammoth
Mountain, to the south of the pass, I saw many gaps in the woods
reaching from the upper edge of the timber-line down to the level
meadows, where avalanches of snow had descended, sweeping away every
tree in their paths as well as the soil they were growing in, leaving
the bed-rock bare. The trees are nearly all uprooted, but a few that
had been extremely well anchored in
clefts of the rock were broken off near the ground. It seems strange
at first sight that trees that had been allowed to grow for a century
or more undisturbed should in their old age be thus swished away at a
stroke. Such avalanches can only occur under rare conditions of
weather and snowfall. No doubt on some positions of the mountain
slopes the inclination and smoothness of the surface is such that
avalanches must occur every winter, or even after every heavy
snow-storm, and of course no trees or even bushes can grow in their
channels. I noticed a few clean-swept slopes of this kind. The
uprooted trees that had grown in the pathway of what might be called
“century avalanches” were piled in windrows, and tucked snugly against
the wall-trees of the gaps, heads downward, excepting a few that were
carried out into the open ground of the meadows, where the heads of
the avalanches had stopped. Young pines, mostly the two-leaved and the
white-barked, are already springing up in
these cleared gaps. It would be interesting to ascertain the age of
these saplings, for thus we should gain a fair approximation to the
year that the great avalanches occurred. Perhaps most or all of them
occurred the same winter. How glad I should be if free to pursue such
studies!

Near the summit at the head of the pass I found a species of dwarf
willow lying perfectly flat on the ground, making a nice, soft, silky
gray carpet, not a single stem or branch more than three inches high;
but the catkins, which are now nearly ripe, stand erect and make a
close, nearly regular gray growth, being larger than all the rest of
the plants. Some of these interesting dwarfs have only one catkin,
—willow bushes reduced to their lowest terms. I found patches of
dwarf vaccinium also forming smooth carpets, closely pressed to the
ground or against the sides of stones, and covered with round pink
flowers in lavish abundance as if they had fallen from the sky like
hail. A little
higher, almost at the very head of the pass, I found the blue arctic
daisy and purple-flowered bryanthus, the mountain’s own darlings,
gentle mountaineers face to face with the sky, kept safe and warm by a
thousand miracles, seeming always the finer and purer the wilder and
stormier their homes. The trees, tough and resiny, seem unable to go a
step farther; but up and up, far above the tree-line, these tender
plants climb, cheerily spreading their gray and pink carpets right up
to the very edges of the snow-banks in deep hollows and shadows. Here,
too, is the familiar robin, tripping on the flowery lawns, bravely
singing the same cheery song I first heard when a boy in Wisconsin
newly arrived from old Scotland. In this fine company sauntering
enchanted, taking no heed of time, I at length entered the gate of the
pass, and the huge rocks began to close around me in all their
mysterious impressiveness. Just then I was startled by a lot of queer,
hairy, muffled creatures coming
shuffling, shambling, wallowing toward me as if they had no bones in
their bodies. Had I discovered them while they were yet a good way
off, I should have tried to avoid them. What a picture they made
contrasted with the others I had just been admiring. When I came up to
them, I found that they were only a band of Indians from Mono on their
way to Yosemite for a load of acorns. They were wrapped in blankets
made of the skins of sage-rabbits. The dirt on some of the faces
seemed almost old enough and thick enough to have a geological
significance; some were strangely blurred and divided into sections by
seams and wrinkles that looked like cleavage joints, and had a worn
abraded look as if they had lain exposed to the weather for ages. I
tried to pass them without stopping, but they would n’t let me; forming
a dismal circle about me, I was closely besieged while they begged
whiskey or tobacco, and it was hard to convince them that I had n’t
any. How glad I
was to get away from the gray, grim crowd and see them vanish down the
trail! Yet it seems sad to feel such desperate repulsion from one’s
fellow beings, however degraded. To prefer the society of squirrels
and woodchucks to that of our own species must surely be unnatural. So
with a fresh breeze and a hill or mountain between us I must wish them
Godspeed and try to pray and sing with Burns, “It’s coming yet, for a’
that, that man to man, the warld o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that.”

How the day passed I hardly know. By the map I have come only about
ten or twelve miles, though the sun is already low in the west,
showing how long I must have lingered, observing, sketching, taking
notes among the glaciated rocks and moraines and Alpine flower-beds.

At sundown the sombre crags and peaks were inspired with the ineffable
beauty of the alpenglow, and a solemn, awful stillness hushed
everything in the landscape.
Then I crept into a hollow by the side of a small lake near the head
of the cañon, smoothed a sheltered spot, and gathered a few pine
tassels for a bed. After the short twilight began to fade I kindled a
sunny fire, made a tin cupful of tea, and lay down to watch the stars.
Soon the night-wind began to flow from the snowy peaks overhead, at
first only a gentle breathing, then gaining strength, in less than an
hour rumbled in massive volume something like a boisterous stream in a
boulder-choked channel, roaring and moaning down the cañon as if the
work it had to do was tremendously important and fateful; and mingled
with these storm tones were those of the waterfalls on the north side
of the cañon, now sounding distinctly, now smothered by the heavier
cataracts of air, making a glorious psalm of savage wildness. My fire
squirmed and struggled as if ill at ease, for though in a sheltered
nook, detached masses of icy wind often fell like icebergs on top
of it, scattering sparks and coals, so that I had to keep well back to
avoid being burned. But the big resiny roots and knots of the dwarf
pine could neither be beaten out nor blown away, and the flames, now
rushing up in long lances, now flattened and twisted on the rocky
ground, roared as if trying to tell the storm stories of the trees
they belonged to, as the light given out was telling the story of the
sunshine they had gathered in centuries of summers.

The stars shone clear in the strip of sky between the huge dark
cliffs; and as I lay recalling the lessons of the day, suddenly the
full moon looked down over the cañon wall, her face apparently filled
with eager concern, which had a startling effect, as if she had left
her place in the sky and had come down to gaze on me alone, like a
person entering one’s bedroom. It was hard to realize that she was in
her place in the sky, and was looking abroad on half the globe, land
and sea, mountains, plains, lakes,
rivers, oceans, ships, cities with their myriads of inhabitants
sleeping and waking, sick and well. No, she seemed to be just on the
rim of Bloody Cañon and looking only at me. This was indeed getting
near to Nature. I remember watching the harvest moon rising above the
oak trees in Wisconsin apparently as big as a cart-wheel and not
farther than half a mile distant. With these exceptions I might say I
never before had seen the moon, and this night she seemed so full of
life and so near, the effect was marvelously impressive and made me
forget the Indians, the great black rocks above me, and the wild
uproar of the winds and waters making their way down the huge jagged
gorge. Of course I slept but little and gladly welcomed the dawn over
the Mono Desert. By the time I had made a cupful of tea the sunbeams
were pouring through the cañon, and I set forth, gazing eagerly at the
tremendous walls of red slates savagely hacked and scarred and
apparently ready to fall in
avalanches great enough to choke the pass and fill up the chain of
lakelets. But soon its beauties came to view, and I bounded lightly
from rock to rock, admiring the polished bosses shining in the slant
sunshine with glorious effect in the general roughness of moraines and
avalanche taluses, even toward the head of the cañon near the highest
fountains of the ice. Here, too, are most of the lowly plant people
seen yesterday on the other side of the divide now opening their
beautiful eyes. None could fail to glory in Nature’s tender care for
them in so wild a place. The little ouzel is flitting from rock to
rock along the rapid swirling Cañon Creek, diving for breakfast in icy
pools, and merrily singing as if the huge rugged avalanche-swept gorge
was the most delightful of all its mountain homes. Besides a high fall
on the north wall of the cañon, apparently coming direct from the sky,
there are many narrow cascades, bright silvery ribbons zigzagging down
the red cliffs, tracing the
diagonal cleavage joints of the metamorphic slates, now contracted and
out of sight, now leaping from ledge to ledge in filmy sheets through
which the sunbeams sift. And on the main Cañon Creek, to which all
these are tributary, is a series of small falls, cascades, and rapids
extending all the way down to the foot of the cañon, interrupted only
by the lakes in which the tossed and beaten waters rest. One of the
finest of the cascades is outspread on the face of a precipice, its
waters separated into ribbon-like strips, and woven into a
diamond-like pattern by tracing the cleavage joints of the rock, while
tufts of bryanthus, grass, sedge, saxifrage form beautiful fringes.
Who could imagine beauty so fine in so savage a place? Gardens are
blooming in all sorts of nooks and hollows—at the head alpine
eriogonums, erigerons, saxifrages, gentians, cowania, bush primula; in
the middle region larkspur, columbine, orthocarpus, castilleia,
harebell, epilobium, violets, mints, yarrow; near the
foot sunflowers, lilies, brier rose, iris, lonicera, clematis.

One of the smallest of the cascades, which I name the Bower Cascade,
is in the lower region of the pass, where the vegetation is snowy and
luxuriant. Wild rose and dogwood form dense masses overarching the
stream, and out of this bower the creek, grown strong with many
indashing tributaries, leaps forth into the light, and descends in a
fluted curve thick-sown with crisp flashing spray. At the foot of the
cañon there is a lake formed in part at least by the damming of the
stream by a terminal moraine. The three other lakes in the cañon are
in basins eroded from the solid rock, where the pressure of the
glacier was greatest, and the most resisting portions of the basin
rims are beautifully, tellingly polished. Below Moraine Lake at the
foot of the cañon there are several old lake-basins lying between the
large lateral moraines which extend out into the desert. These basins
are
now completely filled up by the material carried in by the streams,
and changed to dry sandy flats covered mostly by grass and artemisia
and sun-loving flowers. All these lower lake-basins were evidently
formed by terminal moraine dams deposited where the receding glacier
had lingered during short periods of less waste, or greater snowfall,
or both.

Looking up the cañon from the warm sunny edge of the Mono plain my
morning ramble seems a dream, so great is the change in the vegetation
and climate. The lilies on the bank of Moraine Lake are higher than my
head, and the sunshine is hot enough for palms. Yet the snow round the
arctic gardens at the summit of the pass is plainly visible, only
about four miles away, and between lie specimen zones of all the
principal climates of the globe. In little more than an hour one may
swoop down from winter to summer, from an arctic to a torrid region,
through as great changes of climate as one
would encounter in traveling from Labrador to Florida.

The Indians I had met near the head of the cañon had camped at the
foot of it the night before they made the ascent, and I found their
fire still smoking on the side of a small tributary stream near
Moraine Lake; and on the edge of what is called the Mono Desert, four
or five miles from the lake, I came to a patch of elymus, or wild rye,
growing in magnificent waving clumps six or eight feet high, bearing
heads six to eight inches long. The crop was ripe, and Indian women
were gathering the grain in baskets by bending down large handfuls,
beating out the seed, and fanning it in the wind. The grains are about
five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored and sweet. I fancy the
bread made from it must be as good as wheat bread. A fine squirrelish
employment this wild grain gathering seems, and the women were
evidently enjoying it, laughing and chattering and looking almost
natural, though most
Indians I have seen are not a whit more natural in their lives than we
civilized whites. Perhaps if I knew them better I should like them
better. The worst thing about them is their uncleanliness. Nothing
truly wild is unclean. Down on the shore of Mono Lake I saw a number
of their flimsy huts on the banks of streams that dash swiftly into
that dead sea, —mere brush tents where they lie and eat at their
ease. Some of the men were feasting on buffalo berries, lying beneath
the tall bushes now red with fruit. The berries are rather insipid,
but they must needs be wholesome, since for days and weeks the
Indians, it is said, eat nothing else. In the season they in like
manner depend chiefly on the fat larv of a fly that breeds in the salt
water of the lake, or on the big fat corrugated caterpillars of a
species of silkworm that feeds on the leaves of the yellow pine.
Occasionally a grand rabbit-drive is organized and hundreds are slain
with clubs on the lake shore, chased and frightened into a dense crowd
by dogs,
boys, girls, men and women, and rings of sage brush fire, when of
course they are quickly killed. The skins are made into blankets. In
the autumn the more enterprising of the hunters bring in a good many
deer, and rarely a wild sheep from the high peaks. Antelopes used to
be abundant on the desert at the base of the interior mountain-ranges.
Sage hens, grouse, and squirrels help to vary their wild diet of
worms; pine nuts also from the small interesting Pinus monophylla,
and good bread and good mush are made from acorns and wild rye.
Strange to say, they seem to like the lake larv best of all. Long
windrows are washed up on the shore, which they gather and dry like
grain for winter use. It is said that wars, on account of
encroachments on each other’s worm-grounds, are of common occurrence
among the various tribes and families. Each claims a certain marked
portion of the shore. The pine nuts are delicious, —large quantities
are gathered every autumn. The tribes of the west flank of the range
trade acorns
for worms and pine nuts. The squaws carry immense loads on their backs
across the rough passes and down the range, making journeys of about
forty or fifty miles each way.

The desert around the lake is surprisingly

Mono Lake and Volcanic Cones, Looking South

flowery. In
many places among the sage bushes I saw mentzelia, abronia, aster,
bigelovia, and gilia, all of which seemed to enjoy the hot sunshine.
The abronia, in particular, is a delicate, fragrant, and most charming
plant.

Opposite the mouth of the cañon a range
of volcanic cones extends southward from the lake, rising abruptly out
of the desert like a chain of mountains. The largest of the cones are
about twenty-five hundred feet high above the lake level, have
well-formed craters, and all of them are evidently

Highest Mono Volcanic Cones (near View)

comparatively
recent additions to the landscape. At a distance of a few miles they
look like heaps of loose ashes that have never been blest by either
rain or snow, but, for a’ that and a’ that, yellow pines are climbing
their gray slopes, trying to clothe them and give beauty for ashes. A
country of wonderful
contrasts. Hot deserts bounded by snowladen mountains, —cinders and
ashes scattered on glacier-polished pavements, —frost and fire
working together in the making of beauty. In the lake are several
volcanic islands, which show that the waters were once mingled with
fire.

Glad to get back to the green side of the mountains, though I have
greatly enjoyed the gray east side and hope to see more of it. Reading
these grand mountain manuscripts displayed through every vicissitude
of heat and cold, calm and storm, upheaving volcanoes and
down-grinding glaciers, we see that everything in Nature called
destruction must be creation, —a change from beauty to beauty.

Our glacier meadow camp north of the Soda Springs seems more beautiful
every day. The grass covers all the ground though the leaves are
thread-like in fineness, and in walking on the sod it seems like a
plush carpet of marvelous richness and softness, and the

Sierra Range from Mono Crater

purple panicles brushing against one’s feet are not felt. This is a
typical glacier meadow, occupying the basin of a vanished lake, very
definitely bounded by walls of the arrowy two-leaved pines drawn up in
handsome orderly array like soldiers on parade. There are many other
meadows of the same kind here abouts imbedded in the woods. The main
big meadows along the river are the same in general and extend with
but little interruption for ten or twelve miles, but none I have seen
are so finely finished and perfect as this one. It is richer in
flowering plants than the prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois were when
in all their wild glory. The showy flowers are mostly three species of
gentian, a purple and yellow orthocarpus, a golden-rod or two, a small
blue pentstemon almost like a gentian, potentilla, ivesia,
pedicularis, white violet, kalmia, and bryanthus. There are no coarse
weedy plants. Through this flowery lawn flows a stream silently
gliding, swirling, slipping as if careful not to make the slightest
noise. It is only
about three feet wide in most places, widening here and there into
pools six or eight feet in diameter with no apparent current, the
banks bossily rounded by the down-curving mossy sod, grass panicles
over-leaning like miniature pine trees, and rugs of bryanthus
spreading here and there over sunken boulders. At the foot of the
meadow the stream, rich with the juices of the plants it has
refreshed, sings merrily down over shelving rock ledges on its way to
the Tuolumne River. The sublime, massive Mt. Dana and its companions,
green, red, and white, loom impressively above the pines along the
eastern horizon; a range or spur of gray rugged granite crags and
mountains on the north; the curiously crested and battlemented Mt.
Hoffman on the west; and the Cathedral Range on the south with its
grand Cathedral Peak, Cathedral Spires, Unicorn Peak, and several
others, gray and pointed, or massively rounded.